in association with

Speak Truth To Power

(“Courage without Borders”) Series

in KI Media
.....

Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Guatemala) “Indigenous Peoples’ Rights”

Biography

Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a heroine to Mayan Indians in

Guatemala and indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Born into an impoverished family in 1959, the daughter of an active member of the CUC
(Committee of Campesinos [Agricultural Workers]), she joined the
union in 1979, despite the fact that several members of her family
had been persecuted for their membership. In the early 1980s, the
Guatemalan military launched a "scorched earth campaign," burning over four
hundred Mayan villages to the ground, massacring hundreds of children,
women, and the infirm; and brutally torturing and murdering anyone
suspected of dissenting from the policy of repression. The military killed up
to two hundred thousand people, mostly Mayan Indians, and forced one
million people into exile. Menchú’s mother and brother were
kidnapped and killed, and her father burned alive. While the
Guatemalan army marched against its people, the rest of the
world remained almost completely silent.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Photo: Eddie Adams)

In 1983, Menchú published her autobiography, an account of the Guatemalan
conflict. I, Rigoberta Menchú was translated into twelve languages, and was an
influential factor in changing world opinion about support for the military. Fifteen years
later, discrepancies were found about certain details of the work, but there is no dispute
regarding its essential truth and the massive suffering of Guatemala’s indigenous
peoples at the hands of the hemisphere’s most brutal military government. In 1992,
Rigoberta Menchú Tum won the Nobel Peace Prize for her
work. Menchú has been forced into exile, three times for her advocacy within
Guatemala, and despite the threats, she continues her work today on human rights,
indigenous rights, women’s rights, and development. In 1993 she was named as a
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She has been active in trying to attain
justice for the genocide of Guatemala even pursuing claims today in Spanish courts due
to the legacy of impunity in her home country.

Interview

Struggles for the rights of poor people, for dignity, for human life, seem to be
very, very dark tunnels, but one should always try, in that struggle, to find
some light and some hope. The most important thing to have is a great quantity of
positive feelings and thoughts. Even though one can easily be pessimistic, I
always attempt to look for the highest values that human beings could possibly have. We
have to invent hope all over again. One day, sadly, I said to myself with great
conviction: the death of my parents can never be recuperated. Their lives cannot be
brought back. And what can also never, never be recuperated is the violation of their
dignity as human beings. Nothing will ever convince me that anything could happen to
pay back that debt.

Now, I don’t think this realization is a personal matter; rather, it is a social question. It’s
a question of a society, of history, of all memory. Those of us who are
victims are the ones that decide what pardons are going to take place, and under what
sort of conditions. We,
who have survived the crimes, are the ones who
should have the last words, not those observing. I respect the opinions
of those who say that a decree or an accord or a religious philosophy is enough to
pardon others, but I really would like, much more than that, to hear the voice of
the victims. And at this moment, the victims are really not listened to.

An amnesty is invented by two actors in a war. It’s hardly the idea of the victims, or of
the society. Two armed groups who have been combating each other decide that it is
best for each to pardon the other. This is the whole vulgar reality that the struggle
for human rights has to go through at this moment.

An agreement with real dialogue would bring war to an end as soon as possible.
But I never could accept that two sides that have committed horrendous
atrocities could simply pardon themselves. What the amnesties do is simply
forget and obliterate, with one simple signature, all the violations of human
rights that have taken place. Many of these abuses continue in the lives of
the victims, in the orphans of that conflict. So even though there are amnesties in
countries such as Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala, I can see that people do
not forget the human rights violations that they have suffered, and they continue to live
them. These are things that are not going to be forgotten.

A real reconciliation has to be based on the search for

truth. We who are the victims of these abuses have a right to the truth.
Finding the truth is not enough. What we also have to find is justice. And the ways,
the processes, and the means by which this justice can be accomplished are through
law and through the courts, through procedures that are legal.

This is why I now have a legal case in Guatemala against the

military. We have a lot of corrupt judges, we know about bribery and threats. The
military does not want to set a precedent for real justice, so they bribe the entire legal
system. One of these days that system will become more fair. But we have to give time to
the system of justice to improve.

Living in a country of such violence, of such a history of blood, no one, no one would
want to bring a child into this world. I was a militant woman in the cause of
justice. And for twelve years I did not have a home of my own or a family. I lived in
refugee camps when I could. I lived in the homes of nuns in Mexico. I left behind many,
many bags in many different countries, in many different buildings. Under those
circumstances, what would I have done with a child? I was involved in all kinds of risks,
and thought that maybe I would have to sacrifice my life for my people. When one says
that, you understand, it is not just a slogan, but a real-life experience. I exposed myself
to the most difficult kinds of situations.

I met my husband in 1992. When I met him, I really didn’t think that it was going to be a
longstanding relationship. How could it, when I was always going from one place to
another, almost like a vagabond? My husband’s family, in particular, helped me a great
deal in stabilizing my life. It only happened because my future in-laws were really very
persistent and just insisted—all the time—that we get married, even if it was only a civil
wedding. They were worried about what the family, what the society, what the
community, what everybody else would think, if we weren’t married. For me, it didn’t
have any particular importance.

For me stability began with another wish: it was very important to find, once again,
my sister Ana. She was the youngest of the family. She had decided that she was
going to live with me, but I didn’t have a home where she could live. I began to actually
have the desire to have a home, a desire that coincided with the time when I
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Many friends, people who gave me counseling
thought that it would be better for me, too. After all, you can’t have a Nobel Prize winner
wandering around the world semiclandestinely!

I give thanks to Mexico—to the people of Mexico, and at that time, to the
authorities, the officials of Mexico City—who offered me that sense of stability in a very
short period of time. The office of the mayor gave me a house, and in that house we were
able to construct for ourselves, once again, a very normal life. We were once again a
family. I’d left Guatemala in 1981, but though I’d returned in 1988, I was detained, so I
was forced to leave again. After that I would come and go in and out of Guatemala, but I
could never stay for very long. Finally, in 1994, we went back, officially.

Home is important to me for another reason. I have two children now—one

who I lost. It just changes around your life completely when you have a
child, doesn’t it? You can’t be just moving around the world in any way that you want
anymore. So you live life according to the circumstances that you are in. I can’t say,
though, that I ever had the intention of living my life, or any part of my life, quite the
way in which I lived it! Things just happened. Suddenly I was caught up in the situation.
And I tried to overcome it, with a lot of good will and not a whole lot of introspection.
Now my son lives with my family, with my sister and my nephews; there are seven
children in the house. There are two twins, two years old, a daughter of my sister-in-law,
and four children who don’t have a father. But we live in a large family, and that gives
my son a great deal of satisfaction. He has a community every day.

My youngest son, whose name was Tzunun, which means hummingbird, was part of a
very, very difficult pregnancy. It was risky from the very first day. It required a
tremendous desire to be a mother, to carry it through, and I had decided to have this
child. All my work, all my activities had to be stopped. Still, so sadly, he lived only three
days. But when he died I thought that he had lived with me for many, many years. I
talked to him, I understood him, we thought he could perceive things around him.

During this time, I was always thinking about the world and listening to the news and
trying to find out what was going on. And when you really listen it has a very, very big
impact on you. Because when you are going around to conferences and talking to people
and people are applauding you, you really don’t fully realize what a terrible situation
that women and children are in. But being at home, in your own four walls, and knowing
what is happening in the world, you really feel very limited in what you are doing and
what you can do. My child gave me time to sit back and to think about the
condition of women, and children, and children who don’t have parents,
and children who are abused by their parents. My situation, my condition
as a mother is a great, great privilege: not just some kind of decree, or law,
or desire, but something that, fundamentally, has transformed my life.
There have been a lot of successes in my life. And when you have
success, it helps you to want to continue the struggle. You are not
alone, for it’s not true that it is only pain that motivates people to continue
struggling to make their convictions a reality. The love of many other people, the
support that one has from other people, and above all, the understanding of other
people, has a lot to do with it. It’s when one realizes that there are a lot of
other people in the world that think the way you do, that you feel
you are engaged in a larger undertaking. Every night when I go to
sleep, I say a prayer that more people, more allies will support the
world’s struggles. That’s the most important thing. That would be so good.
- Kerry Kennedy, Speak Truth To Power, 2000
President of Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights

* With my emphasis. - Theary C. Seng, CIVICUS Cambodia founding president

** Please contact us at CIVICUS Cambodia if your newspaper, website, Facebook etc. can
carry this series.

The RFK Center’s Speak Truth To Power (“Courage Without Borders”) project in
Cambodia is funded by The Charitable Foundation (Australia). For more information,
please visit: www.civicus-cam.org and www.rfkcenter.org/sttp.

Next . . . Ka Hsaw Wan (Burma) “Multi-national Corporate Responsibility”